Christiaan Huygens – A family affair - Proeven van Vroeger

at many points the whole family Huygens was actively involved in the construction,
development and dissemination of scientific instruments, that a considerable part of
Christiaan’s fame was a direct consequence of his technical inventions and that Christiaan’s
rising status at the court at Versailles and within the new Académie Royale des Sciences probably
was in close connection to his recent accomplishment of obtaining a privilege with Louis XIV
for his sea-clock (see Chapter VIII, section ii). Huygens’s interaction with the Royal Society
for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge (the Royal Society for short) revolved mainly around
the air-pump and his pendulum clocks – fitting well in the Society’s primary objective of
establishing experimental matters of fact 330 – as did his interaction with the Montmor-group in
Paris, which also had great interest in his and his brother’s telescopes. 331 It is striking, as we
will see, how much of Christiaan’s correspondence with his father and brothers treats a variety
of different matters concerning instruments, ranging from their invention and working, and
their production, costs and distribution to their display and patenting. Also remarkable is the
constant perfecting of the different instruments – at high cost! – and the many occasions
throughout these years that Christiaan considered the possibility of obtaining privileges for his
air-pump, his telescope, his pendulum clocks and the post-coach (see Chapter VIII, section ii).
The comprehensiveness and intensity of Huygens’s involvement with instruments is
corroborated by the fact that of his ten treatises written during these years, six had to do
directly with measurements with, respectively the working and/or theory of, his horologium and
his telescope. 332 After Huygens’s Brevis Assertio Systematis Saturnii (1660), a response to
critiques on his Systema Saturnium dedicated to Prince Leopold de Medici, he did not publish
330
SHAPIN, S. & SCHAFFER, S. (1985) Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental
life : including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer, Princeton,
N.J., Princeton University Press.; ILIFFE, R. (1992) 'In the warehouse': Privacy, property and priority
in the early Royal Society. History of Science. Iliffe describes the controversy that Christiaan Jr. had with
Robert Hooke in the 1670s while trying to obtain a privilege for his horologium oscilatorum with the King
of England.
331
BROWN, H. (1934) Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth century France (1620 - 1680), Baltimore, The
Williams & Wilkins Company. p112-3
332
These six works are (in order of appearance): HUYGENS, C. (1656) de Saturni lunâ observatio nova,
Hag. , Com. ap. Adr. Vlacq.; HUYGENS À ZULICHEM, C. (1658) Horologium, Hag. , Com. ex
officina Adr. Vlacq. .; HUYGENS, C. (1659) Systema Saturnium, sive de causis mirandorum Saturni
phaenomenon, et comite ejus planeta novo, Hag. , Com. ex typographia Adr. Vlacq.; HUYGENS À
ZULICHEM, C. (1660) Brevis Assertio Systematis Satunii sui ad Serenissimum Principem Leopoldum ab
Hetruria, Hag., Com. Ex typographia Adr. Vlaeq.; HUYGENS, C. (1665b) Kort onderwijs aengaende het
gebruyck der Horologien - Instructions concerning the use of pendulum-watches, for finding the longitude at sea.;
HUYGENS, C. (1665a) Extrait d'une lettre du 26 février à Const. Huygens père. Journal des Sçavants.
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